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The coracle--as I had ample reason to know before I was done withher--was a very safe boat for a person of my height and weight, bothbuoyant and clever in a sea-way; but she was the most cross-grained,lopsided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more leewaythan anything else, and turning round and round was the maneuver she wasbest at. Even Ben Gunn himself has admitted that she was "queer tohandle till you knew her way."

Certainly I did not know her way. She turned in every direction but theone I was bound to go; the most part of the time we were broadside on,and I am very sure I never should have made the ship at all but for thetide. By good fortune, paddle as I pleased, the tide was still sweepingme down; and there lay the _Hispaniola_ right in the fairway, hardly tobe missed.

First she loomed before me like a blot of something yet blacker thandarkness, then her spars and hull began to take shape, and the nextmoment, as it seemed (for the further I went the brisker grew thecurrent of the ebb), I was alongside of her hawser, and had laid hold.

The hawser was as taut as a bowstring and the current so strong shepulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, therippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream.One cut with my sea gully, and the _Hispaniola_ would go humming downthe tide.

So far so good; but it next occurred to my recollection that a tauthawser, suddenly cut, is a thing as dangerous as a kicking horse. Ten toone, if I were so foolhardy as to cut the _Hispaniola_ from her anchor,I and the coracle would be knocked clean out of the water.

This brought me to a full stop, and if fortune had not againparticularly favored me, I should have had to abandon my design. But thelight airs which had begun blowing from the southeast and south hadhauled round after nightfall into the southwest. Just while I wasmeditating, a puff came, caught the _Hispaniola_, and forced her up intothe current; and, to my great joy, I felt the hawser slacken in mygrasp, and the hand by which I held it dip for a second under water.

With that I made my mind up, took out my gully, opened it with my teeth,and cut one strand after another, till the vessel swung only by two.Then I lay quiet, waiting to sever these last when the strain should beonce more lightened by a breath of wind.

All this time I had heard the sound of loud voices from the cabin; but,to say truth, my mind had been so entirely taken up with other thoughtsthat I had scarcely given ear. Now, however, when I had nothing else todo, I began to pay more heed.

One I recognized for the coxswain's, Israel Hands, that had been Flint'sgunner in former days. The other was, of course, my friend of the rednightcap. Both men were plainly the worse of drink, and they were stilldrinking; for, even while I was listening, one of them, with a drunkencry, opened the stern window and threw out something, which I divinedto be an empty bottle. But they were not only tipsy; it was plain thatthey were furiously angry. Oaths flew like hailstones, and every now andthen there came forth such an explosion as I thought was sure to end inblows. But each time the quarrel passed off, and the voices grumbledlower for a while, until the next crisis came, and, in its turn, passedaway without result.

On shore, I could see the glow of the great camp fire burning warmlythrough the shore-side trees. Someone was singing a dull, old droningsailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, andseemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I hadheard it on the voyage more than once, and remembered these words:

"But one man of the crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five."

And I thought it was a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for acompany that had met such cruel losses in the morning. But, indeed, fromwhat I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailedon.

At last the breeze came; the schooner sidled and drew nearer in thedark; I felt the hawser slacken once more, and with a good, tougheffort, cut the last fibers through.

The breeze had but little action on the coracle, and I was almostinstantly swept against the bows of the _Hispaniola_. At the same timethe schooner began to turn upon her heel, spinning slowly, end for end,across the current.

I wrought like a fiend, for I expected every moment to be swamped; andsince I found I could not push the coracle directly off, I now shovedstraight astern. At length I was clear of my dangerous neighbor, andjust as I gave the last impulsion, my hands came across a light cordthat was trailing overboard across the stern bulwarks. Instantly Igrasped it.

Why I should have done so I can hardly say. It was at first mereinstinct, but once I had it in my hands and found it fast, curiositybegan to get the upper hand, and I determined I should have one lookthrough the cabin window.

I pulled in hand over hand on the cord, and, when I judged myself nearenough, rose at infinite risk to about half my height, and thuscommanded the roof and a slice of the interior of the cabin.

By this time the schooner and her little consort were gliding prettyswiftly through the water; indeed, we had already fetched up level withthe camp fire. The ship was talking, as sailors say, loudly, treadingthe innumerable ripples with an incessant weltering splash; and until Igot my eye above the window sill I could not comprehend why the watchmenhad taken no alarm. One glance, however, was sufficient; and it was onlyone glance that I durst take from that unsteady skiff. It showed meHands and his companion locked together in deadly wrestle, each with ahand upon the other's throat.

I dropped upon the thwart again, none too soon, for I was nearoverboard. I could see nothing for the moment but these two furious,encrimsoned faces, swaying together under the smoky lamp; and I shut myeyes to let them grow once more familiar with the darkness.

The endless ballad had come to an end at last, and the whole diminishedcompany about the camp fire had broken into the chorus I had heard sooften:

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!"

I was just thinking how busy drink and the devil were at that verymoment in the cabin of the _Hispaniola_, when I was surprised by asudden lurch of the coracle. At the same moment she yawed sharply andseemed to change her course. The speed in the meantime had strangelyincreased.

I opened my eyes at once. All around me were little ripples, combingover with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The_Hispaniola_ herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still beingwhirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars tossa little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, Imade sure she also was wheeling to the southward.

I glanced over my shoulder and my heart jumped against my ribs. There,right behind me, was the glow of the camp fire. The current had turnedat right angles, sweeping round along with it the tall schooner and thelittle dancing coracle; ever quickening, ever bubbling higher, evermuttering louder, it went spinning through the narrows for the open sea.

Suddenly the schooner in front of me gave a violent yaw, turning,perhaps, through twenty degrees; and almost at the same moment one shoutfollowed another from on board. I could hear feet pounding on thecompanion ladder, and I knew that the two drunkards had at last beeninterrupted in their quarrel and awakened to a sense of their disaster.

I lay down flat in the bottom of that wretched skiff and devoutlyrecommended my spirit to its Maker. At the end of the straits I madesure we must fall into some bar of raging breakers, where all mytroubles would be ended speedily; and though I could perhaps bear todie, I could not bear to look upon my fate as it approached.

So I must have lain for hours, continually beaten to and fro upon thebillows, now and again wetted with flying sprays, and never ceasing toexpect death at the next plunge. Gradually weariness grew upon me; anumbness, an occasional stupor, fell upon my mind even in the midst ofmy terrors, until sleep at last intervened, and in my sea-tossed coracleI lay and dreamed of home and the old "Admiral Benbow."